You are wrong. Historically, we've allowed incredibly negative comments and threads to be made about S2 without recriminations. The things we talk about in private forums are about S2 specific business, it is where people are considered and discussed for staff positions and that kind of thing. I'm sure you'll agree that the staff cannot be effective outside those forums if they cannot speak to a person's suitability for such a spot with complete candor in those forums. "Leaking" information from posts in those sorts of threads defeats the purpose and it is quite typical that sites have rules forbidding staff from doing so.
Ok, Denny refuses to acknowledge that I did not attack him on AIM, so you guys can be the judge, here you go:
S2DennyCrane (11:34:25 PM): sounds like BBW staff material #1WP AIMed me within 10 seconds of that. "BBW, ewwww. You should have said RealGM" (rough quote) So do tell us all how you're not colluding with those guys and stirring up shit.
I found that funny because warpoet doesn't like BBW, so I showed him. I'm not trying to stir anything up.
I found it funny that you were pasting my chat into a chat with him. No, I found it to be exactly what I expected.
No, you said I was picking a fight with you, now you're saying I pasted the whole chat to him. I pasted that part of it to him because I found it funny. Chill, it's not that big of a deal. My main point was I did not in any way pick a fight with you, like you accused me of recently.
Alright, I'll give you that the argument about "respect" is really one of semantics, and MikeDC makes good points about why vague and incrementally enforced policies (held together by a strong core principle like respecting good-intentioned posters) are more effective than a more discrete set. I wouldn't call it "clear" per-say, but I don't think I'd argue anymore that the banned posters didn't know what they were getting into. It seems pretty clear to me that very few people around here gets banned without knowing why they got banned. On the other hand, Tim's comments about War Poet undermine that a bit. Regardless (and irregardless) I do take some exception with the idea that "not stirring up shit" is a rule-mandated behavior. I mean, the inspiration for this thread was a frustration borne out of ignorance, and you'd be hard-pressed to say I'm not "stirring up shit" in asking for some answers. You may read some malice into Tim's posts that you don't see in mine, but content-wise I have a hard time seeing a difference. As far as I can tell the act of "stirring up shit" is only a problem if you're ashamed of your shit.
I have to admit, I'm a bit confused. You're telling me that the original seeds of controversy were sewn from the Nets mods enticing the board to go post on other parts of the site? Why was it such a spectacular failure? Why was there so much pushback to the idea that it was a failure? Why did this suddenly make the Nets board a "privileged forum"? I don't understand what the other boards were complaining about.
For the record, I disagreed with GMJ and Pegs, and thought it would do both the site and the Nets forum good to post "OT" topics in the designated forum on S2. Why should there be topics about the Knicks in the Nets forum when it is very easy to see all new posts and discuss the Knicks in the Knicks forum? Same with the TV forum, the Politics forum, etc. I think the same thing would do the Blazers forum a world of good. I met a lot of great new people this way. I viewed S2 as a community where everyone could post together, not in the fractured little cliques that destroyed BBF. I think I was right, and if had been discussed in a more productive way maybe the Nets mods and posters would have agreed. As a matter of fact, if those guys had posted in the Nets forum and nowhere else, hardly anyone would even care that they were gone.
Thats a big part of the reason the POR posters moved here...because they WANTED to be in their little cliques. They started getting shit for using their OT forum to discuss all types of topics, 90% political. Then they started getting shit for it when they started getting in heated discussions with one another. Mods said no more political threads there, only in the PE forum. They didnt like that, which I understand because they know each other as well as you can without meeting (which a lot actually have). They for the most part dont care about some randoms opinion no matter how good/interesting it is, which is fine by me.
You can see from Ghoti's post that there is the school of thought that the staff should "encourage" the posters of a tight community to mix with everyone else. The idea is good, in theory, for all the reasons he gives. On the other hand, our objective is to minimize (if we can't eliminate) the adversarial nature of staff/poster relations that is too common on message boards everywhere - see DaRizzle's post. I wouldn't call the Nets board "suddenly a privileged forum" but rather that the posters there are happy doing the things they do in that forum, people are generally smart enough to find our other forums if they care to, and that it should be our role as staff to encourage the people to have fun and to make the other forums as inviting as they can be. The upside to Ghoti's view is considerable, and I said it has merit. The downside is that it puts the staff in an adversarial position with the posters. The posters openly complained about their threads being closed and/or moved. If this kind of policy makes it not fun for the posters, then it's the miserable failure I see it as, and suggested it is (and suggested it would be at the time). The downside of letting people post what they want, where they want, and the biggest complaint about the Nets forum was that when you view "New Posts," it was dominated by threads in the Nets forum. Not shocking since there have been so many threads and posts and posters there all along. My view is that if we want people to mix more, then we need to come up with fun activities like the GM draft, to encourage people to congregate elsewhere. If the Nets threads are dominating the New Posts page, then the mods of the other forums need to post threads in the other forums to even it out. Or having a 2nd and 3rd big forum like Nets and Blazers and the New Posts become more of a mix. And all without trying to force posters to post somewhere else. Seems like the win. As for the rules... They're deliberately vague. No matter how we'd write them, people intent on stirring up shit will say "but the rule against X doesn't preclude Y so I'm technically not breaking the rules!" If we add Y to the rules, then these people figure out a Z and play the same game. It's not the rules per se that matter, but the spirit of them that do. And you'd be amazed at how people figure out Z - using the tags on threads, or posting on peoples' member pages, or using rep (but it only says no tagging or member pages, nothing about rep so I'm not breaking the rules!). You talk about "stirring up shit" being vague, too. Well, it speaks to intent. You are here as an honorable poster asking fair questions, and you're getting straight answers. You haven't come close to proving otherwise.
Staff is held to a different/higher standard, as they should be. They should be the solution to problems and helpful to the non-staff posters, not contributing to destructive activities.
In addition to what Denny said, I'll just add that it wasn't a simple matter of "the deal". WarPoet's actions were bad on their own.
I don't understand saying that Tim isn't posting with an honorable intent just because he is a moderator at another board. If it serves my memory correctly, the makers of this site were concurrently serving as administrators or community moderators at other sites.
